Quizzes are ranked solely based on how the player rates them ('Excellent', 'Good', 'Average', 'Poor', and 'Very Poor') at the bottom of the answer screen. No one but Terry knows the algorithm behind it, but these are the elements at play.

I'm just curious, but what are the criteria for a quiz getting sunglasses? I just want to know. One of my quizzes has 152 ratings (80% positive) and 753 plays and has no sunglasses (it's ranked at 36,968). What are the requirements to get sunglasses and get a high ranked quiz?

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TK

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger." - Friedrich Nietzsche

The requirements to get a quiz with sunglasses is having it ranked in (roughly) the top 20% of quizzes. Terry updates the number every so often - I think it is currently at 22,000.

To get a high ranked quiz, you must not only get a lot of good ratings (80% good/excellent should be enough), but very few poor/very poor ratings. I don't think anyone apart from Terry knows the exact formula used to calculate it.

Since the author can only see the %age of goods and excellents, they can get mislead and think that the quiz should be ranked higher, but if there are a lot of bad ratings, the quiz might get ranked lower.

I would think that 80% good/excellent should be higher up than 37K (depending on the exact %age of good and excellent) but if most of the other 20% of the ratings were "very poor" then it would make sense.

It does make you wonder about it when you have a quiz with a good percentage of Good/Excellent ratings that doesn't get sunnies. I usually look at how well the quiz rates compared to other quizzes in the subcategory it's in. If it's at the top of the list or near the top of the list, then I don't feel so bad. Maybe that subcategory just really isn't that popular.

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"One language sets you in a corridor for life. Two languages open every door along the way." -Frank Smith

Some things are better left unknown. Kyle is right about the rankings.

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The way to get things done is NOT to mind who gets the credit for doing them. --Benjamin JowettNo one can make you feel inferior without your consent. --Eleanor RooseveltThe day we lose our will to fight is the day we lose our freedom.

Because there are so many quizzes being ranked, even a slight difference can have a big impact on rankings. The balance between Excellent and Good, for example, can make a big difference in the numerical result of analysing the results. 2 Excellent and 6 Good out of 10 ratings gives 80% Good and Excellent, but so does 6 Excellent and 2 Good, and the latter quiz will rank significantly higher than the former, if their unlisted ratings are the same as each other. Since we get no information about the other three scale values, it remains (intentionally, I presume) ambiguous.

In my early days here, I occasionally handed out a Very Poor rating by mistake, because I hit Page Down after making my original rating, to get to the tab to click in order to proceed, and only saw that I had changed the rating as it flashed off my screen. There is no taking it back. I have learned the lesson, but there are probably newbies still entering ratings they didn't mean. Then there are those who rate poorly if they did not do well - nothing to do about them except wait for more plays and let the majority of ratings make an overriding impact. That is one of the reasons for requiring a minimum of 20 ratings before a quiz is ranked. Even then, you may find that the rank fluctuates quite a bit from week to week until you get closer to 100 ratings, by which time it is usually pretty well settled down.

I found that happened in the Great Quiz Race. I lost two sunnies there and the two I lost were questions in it and have 4 digits plays...they are also WAY up in the rankings, the wrong place to be. They weren't there before the Great Quiz Race so I have to blame it on that. Another, that didn't have sunnies, also have the same thing happen. Huge amounts shown in plays and also huge amounts now shown in rankings.

Terry changed things once, which got back one of the sunnies, but it was gone again the following week and the plays and rankings were even higher. AND...the Quiz Race was still going.

I've always been hesitant to provide the precise ranking algorithm because it would make it easier for people to game the system. It's pretty straightforward though.

Even if you have a quiz with lots of high ratings (4s and 5s), you're not seeing what the OTHER ratings are (the 1s,2s,3s). It's possible that your quiz could have been dragged down by other low ratings.

I don't imagine there's anyway around it, and as Kyle says, it does have it's "good" side, too.

Since I've never rated a quiz as "poor" because first off I don't think the editors would allow a "poor" quiz to be online, I can't imagine doing it. Least of all because I didn't do well in the quiz. Heck, I don't do well in a lot of quizzes...but I usually rate them good, if not excellent.

Since I've never rated a quiz as "poor" because first off I don't think the editors would allow a "poor" quiz to be online, I can't imagine doing it. Least of all because I didn't do well in the quiz. Heck, I don't do well in a lot of quizzes...but I usually rate them good, if not excellent.

I have rated several quizzes as poor and a fair few as very poor. I don't think of myself as mean, but some quizzes that were written years ago were allowed through even though they are, to put it mildly, not very interesting. Editors usually reject quizzes on the basis that they are factually incorrect, contain typos or contain bad grammar and need to be worded. I don't think I have ever had a quiz rejected "because it was too boring".

There are 2 main things that make me rate a quiz "poor": no interesting info (except in brain teasers) or completely boring, useless (not meaning interesting but trivial facts - more on the lines of "What time of day was Marilyn Monroe born?" or "What was the score in the 3rd match of the 7th Superbowl after 27 minutes?") or downright wrong.

I rate a quiz very poor if it is riddled with typos/errors, has no interesting info and has 10 very similar, very boring questions (10 lots of "What is the capital of X?" would get at least a poor from me).

The options "poor" and "very poor" are there so people can use them. It might feel harsh, but if you are rating every single quiz "good" then Terry might as well get rid of the lower 3 options. I don't rate many quizzes below "average", but I do to some.

I agree with one thing you say - I can't imagine rating a quiz poor because I didn't do well in it. I have rated one quiz as "excellent" despite the fact that I got 2/10 correct (Q"uiz About This Quiz", I think it was called - I highly recommend it to anyone who has some time on their hands and doesn't get frustrated easily).

Just because a quiz meets the standards well enough to go online, doesn't necessrily mean that it's good. If you disliked a quiz, feel free to give it a poor rating. That's what the range of ratings is for.

Just because a quiz meets the standards well enough to go online, doesn't necessrily mean that it's good. If you disliked a quiz, feel free to give it a poor rating. That's what the range of ratings is for.

Agreed. There are many times where I have urged an author to consider expanding the information sections in a quiz, noting that it is the quality of the information sections of a quiz that can turn a good quiz into a great one. Some authors want to add more info, and others don't, but all quizzes will go online if they meet the basic minimum requirements set out by the Quiz Creation Guidelines and Category Guidelines.

The problem with making the QCGs too strict in terms of content is that A) who is to be the judge of what makes a quiz entertaining? Even within my own categories, there are very few topics that I could consider myself well-versed enough to judge accurately the content quality of a submission. And B) it discourages new authors from starting small and working their way up, as well as being an inhibitive factor for established quiz authors to branch out into new areas of interest.

With that being said, that doesn't mean that you have to rate every quiz as "A for effort". If you believe a quiz is poor, rate it as such. It's a good way to give authors feedback so that they can take a look at their quizzes that didn't do so well and see what they might do better for the next submission.

_________________________Chan fhiach cuirm gun a comhradh.A feast is no use without good talk.

Thank you for your comments. It's very hard for me to rate anything but good. I might try "average" if there's one allowed, which I think there is somewhere. But poor? Is it poor because I'm not interested in the subject matter or is it poor because I don't know the subject matter or is it poor because it is just poor. Very hard to tell the difference between the first and the third one. The second one is simply being mean.

I use the full scale of ratings myself-- seeing so many quizzes from this side I certainly value different types of quizzes. I'd never ask an author to overload the quiz on different things I like. Most newer quizzes I see get Excellent to Average. Poor and Very Poor I reserve for much, much older quizzes with no info which were written at a time when our standards were much lower.

How people rate shouldn't matter too much if they play a lot of quizzes; provided they use the same sort of criteria across the board, everything should even out quite nicely. Whichever approach you take is perfectly fine so long as every quiz you rate isn't 'Very Poor' or 'Excellent'.

There are quizzes on topics I know nothing about but which have been wonderful, and I've rated them highly, even when I have just barely gotten enough questions right to have my rating count. There are others that are just badly written, with a bias or a tone that makes them unenjoyable, with information that is incorrect, or a style that is not interesting at all. I think I've only rated one or two quizzes very poor, but I do rate quizzes average when I don't think much effort went into them, and I have rated quizzes poor when they really are sub-standard. I guess we all have our way of evaluating them, and as long as we are consistent and give high marks for the things we appreciate, then the site and the authors benefit.

As Lady C said, sometimes I ask advise an author that a certain question type may be legal, but will probably result in poor ratings, as players don't tend to like it. If a fabulous quiz written in a lively entertaining manner gets the same ratings as a boring one, it's not really fair to the fabulous quiz. Not every quiz is above average, and it's all right for your ratings to reflect that.